Renting and eviction in Peru: when you can be removed and what your landlord cannot do

The line nobody may cross

A landlord who changes the lock, puts the furniture on the street or cuts the power to force someone out is not collecting a debt. They are committing a crime.

Article 202 of the Criminal Code punishes with two to five years of imprisonment anyone who “with violence, threat, deceit or abuse of trust strips another, wholly or partly, of possession or tenancy of a property”, and also anyone who “with violence or threat disturbs possession”. The article itself clarifies that this violence “is exercised on property as much as on people” — breaking, cutting or disabling things counts.

That the property is theirs and the tenant owes three months changes none of it. The debt has its own route. Possession has another.

When the contract can be terminated for non-payment

Article 1697.1 of the Civil Code sets the threshold, and it is longer than most people assume:

• Monthly rent: the previous month’s rent must be unpaid and another month plus fifteen days must elapse.
• Periods longer than a month: one period plus fifteen days.
• Periods shorter than a month: three periods.

Terminating the contract and evicting are not the same thing. The first ends the relationship; the second removes the person, and a judge orders that.

What happens when the term expires

There is a widespread misunderstanding here, in both directions. Article 1700 is clear:

Vencido el plazo del contrato, si el arrendatario permanece en el uso del bien arrendado, no se entiende que hay renovación tácita, sino la continuación del arrendamiento, bajo sus mismas estipulaciones, hasta que el arrendador solicite su devolución, la cual puede pedir en cualquier momento.

In other words: the tenant does not earn a new contract by staying, and the landlord does not lose the right to ask for the property by having accepted payments. They can ask at any time.

If the lease has no fixed term, article 1703 says how it ends: by judicial or extrajudicial notice to the other party.

And if, once the term has expired or notice has been given, the tenant does not hand the property back, article 1704 lets the landlord demand its return and charge the agreed penalty or, failing that, an amount equal to the previous period’s rent until it is actually returned. Charging that does not mean the lease continues.

The fast route: notarial eviction (Ley 30933)

Since 2019 there has been a shorter path. It does not serve every contract, and that is where half the confusion lives.

It only applies if the contract meets all of this (articles 4 and 5):

1. It is in a public deed or in the Formulario Único de Arrendamiento (FUA) under Decreto Legislativo 1177. A private contract signed between the parties is not enough.
2. It contains a future-consent clause (cláusula de allanamiento a futuro) by which the tenant agrees to return the property on expiry of the term or termination for non-payment.
3. It contains an express-submission clause to Ley 30933.
4. It states the number, type and currency of the account rent is paid into.

There are only two grounds (article 7): expiry of the term, or failure to pay rent. Nothing else. Noise, pets, subletting or damage are claimed by other routes.

Only bank payment counts. To establish non-payment, the notary “only considers the record of transfer or deposit” into the agreed account. If your contract sits under this law and you pay cash, for this procedure you did not pay. And if the landlord changes accounts, they must tell you by a communication of certain date: until they do, what you deposit in the original account is valid.

The real deadlines

The judge’s order can be appealed but the appeal does not suspend it: appealing does not stop the removal.

What the tenant can object with

Article 8.3 limits it to three things, and it is worth knowing before spending five days on arguments that do not qualify:

• Renewal or extension of the contract with the same formalities as the original.
• The records of transfer or deposit into the agreed account.
• Failure to comply with the formalities the law itself requires.

What the landlord cannot do unannounced

Article 1681.5 obliges the tenant to allow inspection of the property, but on two conditions: justified cause and seven days’ prior notice. Entering while the tenant is out, without cause and without notice, is not an owner’s prerogative; item 4 of article 202 of the Criminal Code describes precisely the person who “unlawfully enters a property by concealed acts, in the absence of the possessor”.

The security deposit

The Civil Code’s lease chapter sets no cap on the security deposit, and we did not verify whether any sector rule does. In practice it is negotiated, and what is agreed governs. What is worth doing is putting in writing the amount, the reasons it may be withheld and the deadline for returning it: without that, the argument at the end of the tenancy has no document to go back to.

Check if you qualify

The notarial eviction checklist walks through, point by point, whether your contract meets Ley 30933’s four requirements and which cause applies. Go to the notarial eviction checklist.

Expedited eviction and short-term rentals

If your lease was signed from the start on the official notarized standard form, see expedited eviction in Peru, a faster route than the ordinary process. If the rental is short-term, Airbnb-style, also see short-term rentals and Airbnb in Peru: what rules apply.